The Panic Room: The Happy Institute

Gravesend, Nov 2018

Two things to note up front for this review. Firstly, while it’s not a full on horror experience, The Happy Institute is definitely not suitable for nervous players. And secondly, much like the Gilman Hotel game it replaced, some elements of the game work best when you have no idea what to expect. I’m not going to give any spoilers for anything that’s not covered on the website or ahead of the game’s start, but if you want maximum impact you might want to stop reading until you’ve played it.

All clear? Read on at your peril. The main thing I don’t want to spoil for those who’d prefer to play the game with zero advance knowledge is that, as stated on the website description: the game involves a live actor. In a horror-themed game this normally means that someone periodically jumps out at the players or chases them around, and while you can expect to be startled, the interactions here are more complex and closer to immersive theatre.

The first ten minutes of Happy Institute had me completely won over. This was one part due to the cleverly immersive intro sequence, and another part due to the first few puzzles. It’s tricky to define exactly why they worked so well, since the underlying mechanisms were standard enough; but in their presentation they somehow managed to convey a slight sense of dislocated reality that worked brilliantly with the setting.

Sadly, I thought that the rest of the game didn’t manage to match up to that superb start. Several things combined to let the air out of our excitement, the first being a confusion over what was or was not part of the game. This was because a small part of the content is only supposed to be used with larger teams. I’m not sure whether that part was intended to be accessible at all, though our gamemaster was quick to tell us that we didn’t need to look at it. The problem here though was that our gamemaster was in character as someone who couldn’t be trusted, so my immediate reaction was to eagerly press on. Once we twigged that maybe we should take him at his word, the resulting uncertainty punctured all the great atmosphere built up beforehand. There’s not much that damages immersion as much as stopping to think about whether something is part of the experience or intended to be taken at out-of-character face value.

After your faith in a game is shaken it’s difficult to recover it, and a central section with relatively subtle signposting left us second-guessing ourselves and making only painfully slow progress. If you have confidence in a game, then you assume that anything confusing will resolve in a way that makes complete sense, and you’re then more likely to find that resolution. Once you start to doubt that, you begin chasing all sorts of tenuous ideas because they seem equally likely to be correct. Happy Institute has solid, well-designed puzzles that make complete sense – but in a way that may not be obvious while you’re still working on them. As a result, if you lose the flow you may find it tricky to get it back.

I also thought that as the game went on, the immersive elements drifted away from the witty, creepy and original style in which the game started to something more standard, closer to a clichéd horror setting. As a result I went from absolutely loving the game to being much more ambivalent about it.

The live actor is a critical part of how Happy Institute works, and I’m certain each gamemaster who runs it develops their own style. That means it’s inherently a more variable experience than ‘normal’ escape rooms. No criticism is intended of our host, who performed his role with skill and gusto, even if I liked some parts of the results more than others. But for that reason your mileage may vary even more than with a normal escape room.

Some of the factors that brought down our experience were specific to our visit. Others were not: no glaring weaknesses but some flow issues and a puzzle sequence that seemed to lose some of its initial energy. So my impression is of a game that has the potential to be amazing, but which instead ends up merely pretty good. But that’s a tentative opinion – you might find it significantly better or worse according to your tastes and how it’s run for your group.

This game is so considerably different to The Invitation, both in game play and in quality. it is so much better. I love a room where you have to search for clues rather then just have difficult puzzles to solve. This was really interactive and once you knew what you were doing, really enjoyable.

Good theming/atmosphere (although not necessarily theming of the puzzles themselves) & lots of puzzle content to keep a team busy.

Had a loss of direction on a couple of occasions, especially at the beginning with working out how to proceed. Has made me appreciate other rooms where it\'s clear where a code goes when acquired, and also that sequence puzzles in an ideal order (frustrating to think you have unlocked a puzzle, but it eventually turns out you didn\'t have everything you needed to solve at the time). Still don\'t enjoy mathematics in any form in rooms (even with a provided calculator!).

Overall an enjoyable experience, surprisingly so given its location which seemed to cater to a younger audience (adjacent to soft-play area, climbing wall etc.). Very happy they offer a price for only 2 people, which seemed very reasonable. Go and visit if in Keswick, make sure to select the \'experienced\' setting when booking.

In doing a range of other escape rooms, I have come across a wide range of puzzles, great use of space and immersion.

As a whole it very much feels that this room tries to have a story to it but for us, it didn’t flow and was incredibly disjointed. We found things before finding the clue to lead to that thing so when we did then find the clue it was redundant and confusing.

The game starts with the GM playing Great Uncle Reginald’s video for you. This takes place in the room and so we of course, took this opportunity to start exploring the room and as a result earned a five minute clue penalty for not paying full attention to the video. Although the room overview states the solicitor has an envelope, inside of which is a VHS tape, it isn’t introduced in this way and we wondered afterwards if it would have been better to have found the video somewhere in the room (as another puzzle almost) and to then have to play it ourselves.

As we got going, we discovered that this room had limited variation in its puzzles - things were in the main either a padlock or a combination code. There was very little variety and whilst this can work in some rooms, it didn’t in this room. There was also scope for variation and some things could have easily been something other than ‘another key’. In terms of the puzzles, one was incredibly simplistic in nature (and wasn’t really even a puzzle) whilst another required careful calculation and working out. It felt like you went from one extreme to the other - there was clear thought put into some puzzles but this was completely lacking in others. My partner asked at the end if this was their first ever room because it felt very much like the puzzles had been created and had never then been updated or reviewed. There are certainly better ways of doing things, or even use of certain tech that could be used to update some of the things in this room. Compared to other rooms, it felt very much behind on the times.

There are two doors in the room to give the feel of it being a B&B, both doors have keyholes in them so naturally you think you’re going to need a key to open them, to lead into different rooms. Unfortunately this is not the case and we wasted a lot of time checking to see if the keyholes actually had locks in. I did say to the GM at the end that they shouldn’t have the keyhole in, to indicate they aren’t used in the game.

For us, there was also poor use of space. We spent a lot of time trying to work out how we were going to get somewhere which was never the case. This wasn’t at all clear and more could have been done in the design of the room to indicate this. It goes back to what I said about the original design not being reviewed or updated.

It really says it all when your partner wants to walk out with 25 minutes to go, as mine did. We were both frustrated by the lack of flow and even us standing around doing nothing didn’t prompt the GM to nudge us in any way. I also think this is where the company’s 3 clue rule falls short. We were reluctant to ask for clues, despite clearly not knowing what to do next, in case we needed to use that clue later on. In any room, I would rather ask for 20 clues and escape than ask for none and not complete it. At the end of the day, it’s my game that I have paid (in most cases a lot of money) to play, and I should be allowed to play it as I want and if that involves me asking for more than 3 clues, that should be allowed.

On the whole, possibly an enjoyable room for novices but I would say not one for more experienced players who have an understanding of escape rooms, who expect things to flow, variation in puzzles and better use of tech to support the room. Unfortunately not just The Last Testament, but my Last Room with Know Escape. I won’t be returning to do another room there.